for gemma

My best friend from college is getting married next week. We met again after about four years, and over pizza we talked about marriage.

Girl, I am truly happy for you that you're getting married. I wish with all my heart that your man will bring you only happiness. I wish you a good life together. I wish that your new family will bring you fulfillment.

I wish there were fool-proof, 100% guaranteed-to-work seminars on how to stay happily married. Your mother and sister could give you good advice, and I'm sure I'll have lots of opinions, but in the end, what matters is how much you care for each other. I've been married nine years, and still I cannot tell exactly how you can keep loving the same man if you wake up with him morning after morning, after you've gotten used to all his good points and all his faulty mechanisms. What I know is that I want the marriage to work because of all the love that was there in the beginning, because of all the effort we put into living our life together, and because of the children.

But it doesn't stop there. You have to always remember that you promised to love him till death do you part, and hello, walang divorce sa Pilipinas. There will always be rough times in any marriage, there will always be little fights, minor and major irritations, and it is part of the deal that your foundation (the reason you married him in the first place) should be strong enough to withstand all that.

And one last thing: leave something for yourself. You could give him all the love in the world, but you should also love yourself. Your whole world should not revolve around him. There should be enough respect for yourself, enough value, enough space, to keep you from being just a shadow. If you feel that it's your job to keep him happy, it's also your job to keep yourself happy. There should always be something for you. Gemma the person is just as important as Gemma the wife and the mother. It gives you your dignity, so that when the kids leave the home or (let's hope not) the marriage falls apart, you have enough to go on.

Congratulations, and good luck.

jagey's list

Before class one night, I shared my sentiments over husbands who check too much. This progressed to the little irritating things that men do. Later, my classmate Jagey offered to share a man's POV. These are the things I learned:

1. A man's ego is a big deal. It's hard-wired in him. If you are an intellectually superior wife, you should be bright enough to understand that it's not something you flaunt when the husband's with you, unless you want to pick a fight.

2. Talk to him. A man can't take hints. When you want him to change a lightbulb, you have to tell him exactly when you want it changed. You can't go on pretending to bump into things in the darkened kitchen for a month. He just doesn't get it until you actually say, "Right now." And use simple words. If you talk for an hour, the actual request gets lost in the translation.

3. Men are pigs (Jagey's actual words). They're just different. You'll just get tired of asking him to hang his towel on the hook after taking a shower, or to be careful when pulling a shirt from the closet because the whole pile gets messed up. He will always be looking for socks. I'm taking this lightly. I'm not even talking about farting on the dinner table.

4. Don't rub it in. If you earn more than he does, you can't just buy P5,000- peso shoes every two weeks and say "Well, I can afford it" when he finds out. Better to hide the shoes under the office table. :-)

5. Relearn the loving look. Jagey says to get past the minor irritations, you should try to remember how you looked at him when you realized you loved him already. You should recall the HHWW sessions (if you don't remember what that is, you should seriously re-think why you fell in love with him in the first place).

Okay, so I had a few days to reflect on this. And last night, he had a couple of beers with his friends before dinner. It was one of the things that piss me off. I was looking at him across the table. I knew I was frowning, but I tried to remember how the dog looks adoringly at him. I tried to remember the night we got drunk around a campfire on Good Friday, and how I thought he looked good enough to eat.

He looked up.

"What's with the look?" he said.
"What look?" I said. I thought I looked lovestruck, staring at him over the bowl of adobo.
"You look like your cat contemplating the murder of a mouse."

Oh, Jagey, I have a long way to go.

when death do us part

Last weekend my daughter asked for money to buy cookies with. As I handed her some coins, she asked, "Mama, when you die, who will give me money?" I said she didn't have to worry, I don't think I'm going to die soon, but when I do, Papa will give the money. She nodded and went her way.

Later, she came to me again. She asked when I'm going to die. Then later, if I will die when she's grown up.

I told her that we don't know when we're going to die, but mostly people grow really old and get sick before we die. As she can see, I'm not yet old, and I'm not sick. I could tell she was anxious, but she was relentless. She asked who's going to take care of her baby sister if I die.

My daughter knows death as something that happens to old relatives, like my grandmother and my dad, but she was too young then, and she has never seen a dead person. She knows it happens to pets, but she has not wept tears over a puppy or a bird. I think she was trying to come to terms with death as a personal thing, as something that forever takes away someone she loves. And she was finding it difficult.

I could not explain that even adults such as me have trouble coming to terms with death. Oh, would that I could tell her I'd be around forever. To an eight-year-old, it would be an assurance that her world would be safe, but the lie would hurt her when it happens.

I hope I'll be around a long time, for her sake. But I also hope that I have helped her understand the inevitability of death, so that when it happens and it breaks her heart, she could smile again later and live on.

Salma Hayek's curls

I went to the parlor yesterday to get my hair permed. I wanted to look like Salma Hayek.

I have natural curls in my hair, but they don't bounce and form ringlets. I had a perm some two years ago and I thought it looked fine, so I breezed into the parlor and announced my intention.

The gay stylist said no. Imagine my outrage.

After I had insisted a couple of times that yes, it's what I wanted, and yes, I already know how I'd look like with curls, the stylist sat me down. He explained that I had very fine hair and perming would damage it. He said I had nice wavy hair, and what I could do instead was to have it styled and load it with conditioner. When I had calmed down I asked if he didn't believe in 'The customer is always right.'

No, he said. His job is to make hair look beautiful. If he had given me a perm and my hair started to look ugly after a couple of days, I would have been disappointed and he would have failed in his job. He said he was not after the money I'd pay, but that I should be satisfied enough with the service to make me want to come back.

I liked that. How nice it would be if we all worked the same way: knowing what our job is and doing it the way it should be done. Sometimes we forget that it's not always about the money. And yes, sometimes what matters is not that the customer is right (and gets his way), but that you give what is good for the customer.

He gave me a trim and a hot oil treatment. I got his name and shook his hand. I am not a fan of beauty parlors, but you know, I think I'll go see him again in a couple of weeks. Perhaps I'll let him try the 'hair spa' on me. I may not end up looking like Salma Hayek (I have serious doubts now), but I bet I'll end up liking myself more.

the time traveler's wife

I finished Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife last weekend. It was amazing. I am thoroughly absorbed by the story of Henry and Clare, of his jaunts in time, of how their love carried through. Henry is called a 'chrono-displaced person,' and it is thoroughly entertaining to read about his misadventures, although I could see how it could be frightening. Henry had a very keen survival instinct, aided by his uncanny skill in picking locks, running fast, pickpocketing, and imaginative lying.

And it is, at the core, a love story. Most of the feelings ring true for lovers, and it perfectly captures the sense of insecurity in every relationship. With love, we are never sure. We don't know how it starts, where it ends, why it hurts, when the other goes (or is taken away), what comes after. What we only know is that when we love with all our heart, everything else will come to pass. Even time.

rotten apples, spoiled kids

I was making small talk with our new Japanese consultant this morning, and she asked me how my weekend was. I said me and the husband took one of the kids to the dentist. She said, "Together? What, did each of you hold her hands while the dentist was working on her teeth?" I said no, we were in the waiting room.

"You shouldn't do that. I can't believe how spoiled the kids are in the Philippines. They have drivers, they have maids, they have adults who do all sorts of things for them," she said. "In Japan, most children have working parents, and they learn very early on that they should do things on their own."

I said (a little defensively) that here, both parents also usually work, and weekends are chances to make up for lost time for the kids. "So you spoil them," she said.

I remember another Japanese lady who seemed shocked that most Filipino kindergarten students have separation anxiety. I reassured her that the anxiety is shared (and magnified) by the mothers who bring them to school for the first time. I went so far as to tell her that the separation anxiety is often carried to the first grade, so that's about a couple of years of heart-wrenching scenes in the classroom doors every schoolday morning. In a tone that carried a slight (but noticeable) layer of ridicule, she informed me that Japanese children are not upset about school. She said she remembered riding the school bus on her first day of school when she was 5 or 6 years old.

Are Filipino children spoiled? I will speak of my own children.

My older daughter is eight and doesn't know how to cook. I don't remember ever being allowed to cook in my grandmother's house either. I learned to boil an egg and cook rice when I was 14 and had to live in a boarding house.

She knows how to comb her hair (of course), but I fix it for her every morning. I like the little routine. We talk about Barbie and green hair clips and her friend's new bike while we get her ready for school.

I think she learned to bathe by herself only last year. Her nanny had always given her a bath because (i) she wasted too much water; (ii) she used up too much shampoo; and (iii) she always came out with bubbles still in her hair. One point for the Japanese.

She has packed lunch most mornings. No big deal, even my 59-year old Japanese boss carries a bento box with him, which he eats at 4pm. The packed lunch is prepared by the nanny, though, and the love with which she prepares them surpasses mine. She will cook rellenong bangus in the previous afternoon so my kid can have it for lunch the next day. Rellenong bangus is usually served during fiestas and weddings, next to the embutido, because it's so troublesome to make.

I could go on. Weekends at home are usually exhausting, because I try to do so many things with, and for, the kids. I come to work on Monday with sore arms from carrying the one-year-old. When I'm home she usually climbs all over me. I take it to mean that she misses me, so I oblige. No one carries her around five days a week. We play a lot, and the house is often messy from toys and paper cuttings and clothes. On Saturday evening we sleep all together in the living room, watching late-night TV and chatting. By Sunday evening everything will be tidy and we go to bed early.

So do I spoil them? I prefer to think that I'm making the most of their childhood. I love doing things for them. Very soon they'll grow up and will choose to spend their afternoons locked in their rooms, surfing the net or playing their kind of music, and on weekends they'll have sleepovers with friends, giggling over the likes of Jonas Brothers. I sometimes wish I could hold on to their being kids.

I prefer to think that it's my kind of love. I am not an overprotective mother, and I will not be able to teach them everything, or do everything for them. But you know, I wish I could remember my mother combing my hair, or my mother knowing I hated yellow dresses, when I was eight. I'd like to think that my daughters will remember that I was not always around when they were kids, but whatever time I had, I loved to spend it with them.

For other points of view, I'll go talk to some more Japanese.

i remember the boy

I was chatting with an old friend earlier today, and she mentioned that John was back in the old town.

"Really?" I said. "What is he doing now?"

John is married, with two kids. He sells snacks in the canteen of the local public school.

John was one of my boardmates in the months after my college graduation. He was also my first love.

He was the local heartthrob and I was a nerd. It didn't help that I was studying in Manila and he was in the province, but when you're 14 you think that love like that can last forever. I'd go home whenever my allowance would allow me, then sigh over him. He was the sole topic in about six of my teenage diaries.

But John was never my boyfriend (a fact that my husband would not probably believe). I guess that was why he stayed my crush for about eight years, because he was the one person I could not have, and I despaired over that fact for a long time, but I never really understood why.

Now I work in a bank, buy shoes every two weeks, and studies MBA. I have a husband who does not blink when I wanted to buy a laptop after lunch, although he doesn't know about the shoes. :-)

Hearing about John, I now think, what would I have been had I become his wife? An employee in the local cooperative who sells Avon cosmetics during lunch break?

No, I don't gloat over his present state. It's just that in the heart of every woman (and man) who had once loved and been heartbroken, a small part will always wonder about a past love, where the person is, what he is doing. And perhaps, when they meet again, there will be a little spark, a little racing of the pulse, in remembering what you once had.

For some, there will be nothing. And still for some, it's "How the heck did I fall in love with him?!"